


The Portly Mill

by LSDAndKizuki



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Psychological Torture, Torture, serial killer au, unsolicited opinions on Warwickshire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 09:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7041688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSDAndKizuki/pseuds/LSDAndKizuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt for the challenge: Modern AU where Ramsay is a serial killer who keeps his victims chained up in his basement and tortures them until they die of blood loss or starve to death, but after having Theon in his basement he starts to feel something special for him and decides that he wants to keep him forever. That he is "the one".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Portly Mill

Ramsay knows Warwickshire very well, considering he doesn’t live there. To most Londoners the Midlands are a repeating pattern of villages, weakly sprouting hills and industrial checkpoints. Ramsay knows this pattern better, knows that it sprawls to unexpected places, and is in fact filled with surprises. Useful surprises, if one is in the right line of work. He knows four places in Warwickshire particularly well: Fotheringham, Blakely, Townsend, and the one he only dubbed the Portly Mill.

He sat in the basement of Fotheringham Hall opposite Mance Rayder. The Hall was only a cabin, but the dignity of the foundations, the architecture that remained both modest and defiantly grand, had amused Ramsay enough to name it Fotheringham Hall, after his Latin teacher. It was the only one of his Midlands warehouses which contained access to the Internet. Rayder’s wrists hung limply in the manacles, and he no longer twitched every time Ramsay’s chair squeaked. After two solid months, the man was on his last legs. Ramsay whistled. “It’s been a while since my last visit.”

Rayder did not even flinch.

“Apologies for keeping you waiting. Here you go…” He unbuckled from his belt a flask of water. The sloshing seemed to awaken the Rayder spirit, and his eyes flared up, red with need. His throat could not seem to form words, but his mouth stuttered open and shut, anticipating. His eyes closed again as Ramsay tipped the water down his gullet, a silent sign of submission which brought an unbidden grin to Ramsay’s face. “That will keep you going for another couple of days, I should think.” Rayder’s shoulders shuddered, but the water had not given him enough strength to lift his head up. His hair was beginning to fall out.

Ramsay locked the door of Fotheringham Hall behind him. He would come back in a week, no point in waiting for the body to stink the place up. Mance Rayder was no longer as interesting, since he’d lost his ability to supply colourful curses and insults. Besides, Ramsay had a new subject waiting for him at the Mill.

*****

Theon did not even know that Warwickshire was a place, before his prolonged stay there. He would never come to know its ins and outs in the way Ramsay did, on account of spending most of his time there underground.

“Come on, you,” Ramsay grunted, pulling the unconscious creature from the back of his car. The man was all gangly limbs, barely out of puberty and sporting some uneven stubble. “Let’s get you inside, somewhere nice and cosy.” Ramsay had to admit that the man was pretty young, by his standards. He generally went for late-twenties-to-thirties, simply because there was an unparalleled thrill in torturing someone ten years your senior. They would be unsettled and confused from the start, to see that their captor was such a young man. Some would even attempt to exert authority over Ramsay, as if they were his father and could just tell him what to do and that would be that… To bring those elders to breaking point, it felt somehow like payback. But this one? He had come onto Ramsay _himself,_ at the club _._

“So…” The man’s arm came out of nowhere, looping noose-like around Ramsay’s shoulders. “ _You_ look lonely to me.” Ramsay’s hands clenched around his shot glass.

“Is that a fact...?”

“ _Hell_ yeah.” The man was a Londoner, yet seemed to be attempting to talk like a West-Coast American. “Look, my mates and me are having a ball on the balcony, and I’m sure a guy with locks like you wouldn’t go amiss, yanowhaddImsaying?” He shoved a couple of graceless fingers into Ramsay’s hair as he said this. Ramsay was a step away from disposing of his glass in the guy’s forehead, but one look at his face stopped him dead in his tracks. It wasn’t that he was especially pretty – though there was a certain charm to his features – it was the sudden sparkling _understanding_ that went straight through from the stranger, under Ramsay’s skin. He had not spent one moment with this man in his basement, but it seemed as though he had peeled it all away already – he was hiding helplessly behind a mask, and yet there was no hope of a secret between them.

Well, with that sort of connection, what can one do? “Sure,” said Ramsay, “Tell you what, let me buy you a drink…”

Unfortunately, he hadn’t the chance to find out his little experiment’s name before he collapsed into his arms. There would be time.

They made their way into the belly of the Portly Mill. It was, as the name might suggest, a squat little building, medieval in architecture – the windows were still those slit-things – and bent sideways from the wind and time. Unlike Fotheringham, Blakely and Townsend, it was not in a forest. It stood plaintively in the middle of a field, next to a now dried-up river, in which a partially sunken waterwheel no longer churned. It was secretly Ramsay’s favourite hideout. It was homely, standing right there in plain sight, and _no one_ ever stopped by.

“Wh…” The clanking against the stone steps must have awakened his captive.

“Hi there.”

“D’nt… No Ess…”

Ramsay smiled. “You what?”

“No STDs, I swear…”

Ramsay barked out a laugh, which reverberated around the walls, and seemed to jerk the man out of his slumber. “I doubt that. You were clearly whoring yourself out at that club.” Even _before_ he’d come to Ramsay, in fact. He must have watched him go into the men’s room with different guy three times.

“Where… _Am_ I?”

“You’re in Warwickshire. A place of mine. You’ll get accustomed to the smell soon enough, don’t worry.”

“… The fuck’s a Worricksher….”

It took a full three minutes for him to fully comprehend his situation. By this point, Ramsay had brought him to the cellar, and placed him against the wall.

“Fuck,” the man moaned, hands gripping the sides of his head and knees drawing up to his chest, “What do you want… I’ll give you money, how-”

“-Ever much I want, you can pay it, just let you go, yadda, yadda. Do you want to get this part over with quickly, or am I seriously going to have to hear the same bullshit from you too?”

“Anything you want…”

Ramsay huffed, and then remembered what had drawn him to this man in the first place. He seized his chin, forcing him to look him in the eye. He narrowed his own at it, and studied.

The emotional overtone was definitely fear. Understandable, considering the circumstances, but there had to be more to it, didn’t there? Ramsay looked harder. That cockiness he’d seen in the club was still there, ready to jump out as false bravado when the time came, and – Ramsay could envision the layers coming away like a good piece of skin – there were deeper, wilder, more desperate emotions even behind that. There was, Ramsay noticed with excitement, behind the surprise and indignation, a definite _resignation._ As though a part of this man knew he’d had this coming for a long time, this… “What’s your name?”

“I –” The mask licked its lips, “R-Reek.”

_What?_

Reek gave Ramsay a lopsided grin. “Yeah. All my mates call me that. Reckon you consider yourself a mate, given my kind treatment.” And there it was, leaping lionlike from the shadows of that basement, an unnecessary bout of bravado. Ramsay punched Reek in the mouth, and his head smacked the wall behind with an ominous _crack._ “Shi – it!” Ramsay fisted a chunk of his hair from behind.

“OK, clearly we need to go over some of the basic facts of your situation.” The humour had evaporated from Reek’s eyes, but the self-assurance was still there. “Number one: you don’t have secrets anymore. Sooner or later, I will get any information I want out of you, and more besides. You’ll be gushing it out willingly, trust me.”

Reek gave him a half-convincing _Ooh-I’m-so-scared_ look.

“Number two: This is not another club party, or anything your “mates” might do on a Saturday night.” He reached into his pockets for a lighter. “You’re not leaving the Mill ever again. Before anyone thinks of coming for you, I’ll have gotten bored, and you’ll be dead. That’s the best thing you can hope for, understood?”

The words seemed to be getting through to the man, at last. His face had gone slack, and the colour was draining out of it. _Abandonment issues, I’d wager._ “And number three, my brave little guy…” He started to click the lighter behind his palm repeatedly, grasping for a flame – “Everything – and I _mean_ everything you have to say to me – I’ve heard before. I’ve dealt with it all – bravery, defiance, begging, bargaining. There _isn’t_ another side of me to appeal to. What you see is what you get with me.” Ramsay himself was a little less convinced than usual of this fact. He suspected that there _was_ more to this Reek fellow, and he was in for a few surprises, but he did not doubt his ability to cope with them. He sensed that they were the good sort of surprise, rather than the bad. The sort that made this part of his life a genuine highlight of his week… “Now, by all means, knock yourself out with crying or pleading or shouting, or whatever it is you need to do. Just be aware, it _will not work._ ”

A fire finally appeared on the edge of his lighter. Ramsay kept it aloft with one hand, and picked up Reek’s hand with the other. “I don’t like being fucked with, and I do like knowing my victim’s name. So I’m going to ask you one more time…” he began to bring his hands closer together, gripping a wriggling ring and middle finger into place, while the tiny flame slowly licked its way towards it. “What’s your name?”

“Go fuck yourself, I already told yo _aaagh…”_ The lighter wrapped its tongues gleefully around Reek’s fingertips, not catching for a moment, simply tasting, before Ramsay could see the beginnings of smoulder on pale skin. A litany of pleasing sounds issued forth. “Fuck, fuck, _nooo…_ ”

“Now,” Ramsay pulled the left hand away from the lighter to a sob of relief from Reek, which transformed into a yelp of horror, as he picked up a weakly resisting right hand. “I don’t think _that’s_ your name.”

“No, _don’t – Theon!_ It’s Theon, OK? Fucking _stop!_ ”

Success, much more easily achieved than with Rayder. Ramsay was almost disappointed, but too satisfied by the way Theon was now trying to soothe his blistered left hand by stuffing the fingers in his mouth, to really feel it. He put out the lighter.

Theon, meaning _god._ What a grandiose name for one so easily understood. Reek suited the man better.

He whistled, his hands automatically reaching into his back pocket for his switchblade. Theon was panting heavily. The burst of pain had alerted all his senses; all numbing effects of the drugs were vanished now. Soon, Ramsay would need to use the fetters, but before then, why not indulge in a little excitement? “Theon, eh?” he murmured. He looked once more into his eyes, and watched every secret emotion expose itself to him. “I have a few more questions for you, Theon. Before I take my leave of you.”

“Before you… Let me go?”

“Oh, that’s not what I said.” He fingered the edge of his knife. It made him cringe internally, fully aware of the cliché in the action, but it was a tried and tested way of inducing some quick panic, to get the blood flowing faster. “I would not want you to be in any doubt as to why you’re here. Now: Who do you think will rescue you, Theon?”

That seemed to take him off guard. Clearly, the understanding that Ramsay felt so keenly was not mutual. Every one of Theon’s secrets would expose themselves one by one to Ramsay, but not a single one of Ramsay’s to Theon. His intestines squeezed in pleasure. Theon licked his lips, said “My father. He’s important, he’ll pay whatever ransom you –”

“There won’t be a ransom to pay, I’m afraid. I’m not an idiot.” He studied the eyes. “And I don’t think your father is important, actually. Or that he really cares about you.”

“Lies – the fuck do you know –”

“Who else?”

Theon said nothing. Ramsay prompted him by giving his knife a flick. “My, my sister! Asha. She’ll rescue me, she’ll notice I’m gone right away.” This he seemed to be more convinced of. “And Robb will help. Robb cares, he really does.” And this… The insecurity, the resignation, the sudden self-loathing had never seemed so strong in those eyes.

Father. Asha. Robb. Three sad little hopes to be ground out of existence. Ramsay had faced greater challenges.

*****

The first few days were fine. They were filled with questions, questions that became easier and easier for Theon to answer, the more time passed.

“Tell me why you said your name was Reek.”

“You _bastard!_ I was kidding!”

He drew out screams like yarn from wool, with precision and grace. He found that the most effective tools of torture pertained to loss in some way, that Theon seemed most affected when something was taken away. So, he had started to remove his teeth, a few at a time, at irregular points.

“It’s been a week, now. Tell me why.”

“You’re... You’re _sick.”_

Theon always begged by the end of a session. He had a low tolerance for pain. However, by the time Ramsay returned again, he had convinced himself that he was brave, and would be back to fighting. It never got tiring, for either party. Ramsay still had his other places to visit – since Rayder’s unfortunate departure from the land of the living, Fotheringham Hall was left vacant – but the Portly Mill was quickly becoming the highlight of his week. He loved to ask Theon questions.

“It’s been about two weeks now, hasn’t it? You still haven’t told me _why._ Reek’s a horrible name, why would you choose it?”

“Because. I don’t _fucking_ know, OK, please...”

It was only three weeks into the arrangement when Ramsay started to realise that he ought to have become bored by now.

“So.” Ramsay had taken his chair down to the basement, from which he could get a better look at Theon Greyjoy. “I found your Robb, at long last.” He grinned. “You neglected to mention he was a _Stark,_ my dear boy.”

Theon raised his head. “ _Please,”_ he croaked. “God, _please_ stop. Don’t hurt him…” Ramsay was working hard on his hurting, having worked his way inwards, starting with the extremities – toes and fingers – and making his way towards the torso. That was where the heart lay.

“You’ll be disappointed to hear that he’s not looking for you anymore.”

The last pieces of Theon’s hastily scribbled face fell away. “Wh… Why…”

“He has more important things to worry about, it seems.” Ramsay relished holding the final nail inside his mouth as if it were a tangible thing, rusted, blunt and cruelly effective. “And, I mean… Why _would_ he be looking? After what you did.”

Theon curled in on himself. He let out a small wordless moan; his seven toes clenched against his feet. Ramsay felt a supreme rush of power, at his astuteness, and the final assertion of what he had always suspected: there truly were no secrets.

“Oh, so you _did_ do something?” Theon looked up from his seat of despair.

“Wha..?”

“I guessed that you must have done something bad to your best friend.” Ramsay found himself unwittingly leaving his chair and kneeling in front of Theon. The more he looked at that face, that newly vulnerable face, the more he realised how beautiful it was. “It’s all in your eyes, Theon…” Those eyes, set in a shadowed face, glistening like frying gristle on meat, so open and unconcealed. “Will you let me try to figure it out, or have you accepted the truth now? I understand you.” Better, and with more empathy than any other one of his captives, he realised.

And then he remembered, _I have to kill him._ The thought seemed to open a hole in his insides, out of which all his pleasure drained. _No…_

Theon was crying now, his head bent downwards and away from Ramsay, and the only sound of it was the light slap of water on stone. All he had been through, every plea and scream, and yet it was an insinuation of guilt that brought him to tears. “I’ll tell,” he whimpered.

And he did. By Ramsay’s standards, the betrayals were petty, and easily solved with a few important chats, he reckoned. Then again, his standards of what constituted a heinous act might have been different to Theon’s.

When he was done, Ramsay gently took his face in his hands. “Why did you call yourself Reek?” He asked, knowing the answer.

Theon had no tears left, but the humidity of the Portly Mill’s basement left the tracks tattooed on his cheeks. “Because I am,” he said. “I’m nothing. I stink. Like dad always says, I…” He shuddered, “Reek.”

Later in his car on the way to London, Ramsay said aloud, “I think that was a _moment._ ”

*****

Ramsay left the Mill alone for a few days after that. He visited Osha in Blakely and Rodrick in Townsend, but could not achieve with either of them quite what he had with his Reek. He worked himself up to the thought of one day closing the door of the Mill on his beloved prisoner, and never again seeing his face.

It did not bear thinking about, let alone seeing through. And – Ramsay stifled a laugh, in the middle of his shift at Tesco’s – who made the rule, exactly, that stated that Ramsay must kill _all_ of his captives? Why was Ramsay, simply because of his pastime, not allowed a soulmate?

“I’ve decided I’m going to keep you,” he announced to Reek, four days after his last visit. Reek did not respond. “Hello? Aren’t you pleased? I said I’m not going to kill you.” The joy in his chest threatened to crush him. “I’ve changed the rules.”

“Water…” Of course. Ramsay reached for his flask.

“I’ll still keep you at the Mill, of course,” he went on merrily, “but I thought we could go on a few day trips occasionally, too. Warwickshire is a lovely place, once you get used to it.”

“ _Water…_ ” Ramsay fed him. There was a pause, while he waited for his gratitude. “… Just let me go…”

The happiness diminished. “Why would I do that?”

“If… you don’t want me dead, why not just… let me go?” Reek’s head rested the wall, and for once, Ramsay could not fathom the deep abiding emotion in them. Was it sadness? Longing? Surely not _pity?_ “I swear, I’ll tell no one… I’ll get a new name and identity, just… let me _go._ ”

“Absolutely not,” Ramsay’s affection wore thin, as anger took its place, because he _saw_ that look, and how _dare_ his Reek look at him in that way? “I,” he seized the back of Reek’s neck, and pushed his head down to the floor, “ _adore you._ You’re not going anywhere.”

The world may as well have disappeared around that little Mill. Silence seeped through all the dead machinery that hung several feet above their secluded basement. For years, the only cars that had passed by those abandoned fields belonged to Ramsay. And why should the world exist, when everything Ramsay needed lay right here? He softened his grip on Reek’s hair. “I got a call the other day,” he said, “Asking about Fotheringham Hall. I denied any knowledge, of course.” Who needed a working waterwheel, when all the energy of human life could be held in a single meeting of eyes? “But I’m no fool, Reek. It’s only a matter of time…” He understood all, at long last. He understood, now, the stubbornness with which Rodrick insisted that his wife would come for him and find him.

“They’re coming for me.” Reek’s voice cracked with the relief of the statement. Ramsay swallowed, while his hand stroked the hair at the back of Reek’s head, without his knowledge.

“They may be. But love knows no bounds, Reek.”

Warwickshire was, after all, larger than most Londoners were aware. And full of surprises, if you knew where to look. And Ramsay knew the place so _very_ well. “I can’t wait to explore it with you,” he whispered, and the landscape tumbled around their world, yawning and empty and waiting.


End file.
